The southeast corner of E. Second St. and Avenue A was co-named for the late housing activist Mary Spink on Sat., Dec. 2. For nearly 20 years, Spink was the executive director of the Lower East Side People’s Mutual Housing Association. She was also an appointed member of Community Board 3, a member of the Seward Park Area Coalition and a board member of the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union, the Lower Eastside Girls Club and the East Village Community Coalition.

Spink transcended difficult beginnings and a checkered past to rise to become executive director of the Lower East Side People’s M.H.A., which today owns and runs 32 low-income buildings in the East Village and Lower East Side, as well as managing eight low-income, tenant-owned, Housing Development Fund Corporation buildings.

She left behind a past of abuse and reform school in Troy, N.Y., and came to the Lower East Side from the Albany region in her late teens. The neighborhood then was teeming with drugs, and Spink soon got hooked. But she eventually kicked drugs and became a leading light of the community.

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One Response to Mary Spink in the house

Great but Ms. Mendez's time would be better spent helping constituents who plead for help with noise complaints than parading in front of the cameras with street signs that help no one. Ms. Mendez was happy to go to 2nd St. and Ave. A; but when I asked her to help with the Spiegel bar just one block east on 2nd St. and 1st Ave., she couldn't be bothered. Spiegel runs a Two-Wheel Tuesday street event most of the year. The street and sidewalk are full of bikers running their engines all night. (It's too chilly now for the big, tough bikers so we have a few months of quiet.) Mendez would not lift a finger to help. Hope she doesn't think one day she'll get a street sign.